It's a delight to see a cast of spirited veteran actors lined up on the stage of City Center, at the start of a four-night Encores! revival of "70, Girls, 70." The show opened Thursday night and closes Sunday.

Oscar winner Olympia Dukakis leads this troupe in a shaggy dog story about a gang of fur-coat thieves trying to raise the money to buy an old residential hotel on Broadway.

The old folks are all absolutely charming, but you watch with some trepidation as they dance: Will everyone finish the run without injury?

"70, Girls, 70" ran only a month when it first opened on Broadway in 1971. It was a flop for composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb, sandwiched between their mega-hits "Cabaret" and "Chicago."

Clearly Americans weren't ready to focus on the elderly in a Broadway entertainment, and —though many baby boomers are now perilously close to senior status — audiences may still get a bit queasy, for example, when Dukakis announces late in the game, "I think we ought to talk about death."

In truth this show, based on Peter Coke's play "Breath of Spring," is a rather lame affair. It's true that Kander and Ebb were mining new territory, probably way ahead of its time, but the story doesn't measure up to the charm of its cast.

As an entertainment standing on its own — aside from its archival value — "70, Girls, 70" doesn't deliver very much.

We have a stageful of familiar people including Bob Dishy, Anita Gillette, George S. Irving, Carole Cook, Carleton Carpenter and Gerry Vichi, all remarkably game and willing to go through the vigorous paces set for them by director-choreographer Kathleen Marshall.

For the very particular Encores! audience, this brief revival is also a chance to hear one of the mostly forgotten scores by a major Broadway songwriting team. Perhaps the only song that survived the show was "Coffee in a Cardboard Cup," hardly a major Broadway standard.

A smaller than usual onstage band is directed by Paul Gemignani, the eminent conductor who succeeded Rob Fisher this year, and the score sounds like the second-rate Kander-and-Ebb work it is.

Ironically, the only show-stopper of this long evening is "Go Visit Your Grandmother," which is performed with brio by one of the few non-seniors in the cast, the amazing Mark Price, and the very witty Charlotte Rae.

Such moments are few and far between, though, as Dukakis labors through a performance that seems under-rehearsed — though she still generates lots of appeal. The rest of the cast tries to breathe life into a plot that is pretty silly, about a series of increasingly risky fur-coat heists.

Still, you can't avoid having affection for these troupers, still giving it their all.